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AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show looking at ICE’s escalating use of violence and force. Last week, an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good, 37-year-old mother of three, in Minneapolis, sparking nationwide protests. On Thursday, President Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act and send troops to Minnesota.
Following the shooting of Renee Good, ICE’s violent tactics have come under increasing scrutiny. A new investigation by ProPublica documents more than 40 cases of immigration agents using banned chokeholds and other moves that can cut off breathing.
In one case, ICE agents violently arrested an ICU nurse in California named Amanda Trebach while she was documenting ICE operations in the Los Angeles area. Two plainclothes, masked agents were filmed pinning her against the pavement as they knelt on her back. One agent put his knee on Trebach’s head for a brief moment.
EYEWITNESS 1: Filming you.
EYEWITNESS 2: Get off her head!
AMANDA TREBACH: Get off me!
EYEWITNESS 2: Get off! Your knee is on her [bleep] head!
AMANDA TREBACH: Get off me!
EYEWITNESS 2: Get it off!
AMANDA TREBACH: Get off me!
ICE AGENT 1: Get back. Get back. Get back.
EYEWITNESS 2: Get off her head!
AMANDA TREBACH: Get off me!
ICE AGENT 1: Get back. Get back.
ICE AGENT 2: You better get back.
AMANDA TREBACH: Get off me!
ICE AGENT 1: Get back. Get back.
EYEWITNESS 1: This is public property, sir. This is public property.
EYEWITNESS 2: Streaming live, this is ICE beating her up. They’ve got a knee on her head.
ICE AGENT 1: Scoot back.
EYEWITNESS 2: I am where I need to be: 10 feet. So…
ICE AGENT 2: Can you guys get her in the van?
AMANDA TREBACH: Sir?
EYEWITNESS 2: You OK?
AMANDA TREBACH: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Amanda Trebach was then held in federal custody. After her release, she appeared on Democracy Now!
AMANDA TREBACH: They came out in a convoy. They jumped out of the vehicle. As you could see, they pinned me to the ground, and they handcuffed me. They took me into an unmarked vehicle. They did not read me my rights. They didn’t tell me where I was going. They shut the vehicle. They drove me to the other side of the noncivilian side of Terminal Island. And basically, they kidnapped me.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by ProPublica reporter Nicole Foy, her latest article headlined “We Found More Than 40 Cases of Immigration Agents Using Banned Chokeholds and Other Moves That Can Cut Off Breathing.” In October, Nicole also revealed how ICE detained more than 170 U.S. citizens.
Nicole Foy, welcome to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. Why don’t you lay out your latest findings? Talk about these potentially lethal chokeholds — which are, in fact, illegal?
NICOLE FOY: Yes. My co-worker McKenzie Funk and I, we spent of this last year documenting aggressive tactics by immigration agents. And what we found is that over the last year, immigration agents across the country have used these really dangerous and banned — by their own policy — chokehold and carotid restraints, as well as many of these also dangerous kneeling on people’s necks, kneeling on backs, like we saw with Amanda, in ways that can really restrict your breathing and your blood flow, which is one of the reasons why their own training actually highly discourages these types of arrest. But we’ve seen it across the country.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Nicole, can you talk about some of the specific examples that you document — for instance, Arnoldo Bazan, a 10th grader in Texas?
NICOLE FOY: Yes, he was — that’s a case that I think really sticks out, because he is a 16-year-old U.S. citizen, and he was really violently arrested with his father in a store in Houston. You can hear him in the video, as officers are putting him in a chokehold, screaming that he’s a minor, that he’s 16, he was going to school, that he’s a U.S. citizen. And yet he told us that that didn’t matter. The agent continued to use a chokehold on him, that, again, is banned unless there is a call for deadly force.
And when we showed videos like this one to a number of police officers, other former immigration officials and top DHS officials, they were really appalled, and they had no idea what could have prompted this level of deadly force, especially against someone like a 16-year-old U.S. citizen, who really had really difficult and dramatic injuries to deal with in the aftermath.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now, there is a federal ban on chokeholds and similar tactics. Have any officers, from your reporting, who’ve used these tactics faced disciplinary measures?
NICOLE FOY: We’ve yet to find any evidence that they have. We asked the Department of Homeland Security if they have disciplined any officers, especially in cases where we showed them these videos and said, “Your own policy bans the use of a carotid restraint, the use of a chokehold. Have these officers been disciplined?” And they did not answer us, would not tell us if any had been disciplined for these tactics. And they stood very firmly behind their officers’ actions and said that they were acting with the utmost professionalism and even using a reasonable amount of force.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to read from your piece. “Immigration agents have put civilians’ lives at risk using more than their guns. An agent in Houston put a teenage citizen into a chokehold, wrapping his arm around the boy’s neck, choking him so hard … his neck had red welts hours later. A black-masked agent in Los Angeles pressed his knee into a woman’s neck while she was handcuffed; [she] then appeared to pass out. An agent in Massachusetts jabbed his finger and thumb into the neck and arteries of a young father who refused to be separated from his wife and 1-year-old daughter. The man’s eyes rolled back in his head and he started convulsing.” That’s what you wrote. Tell us more about these cases.
NICOLE FOY: I think the case of the young father in Massachusetts is particularly disturbing, and was really disturbing for so many of the bystanders who were there witnessing it and recording it. Like you said, he refused to be separated from his young daughter, a 1-year-old, who was in the car with him in between him and his wife. Agents had come to arrest his wife, but she also didn’t want to leave her 1-year-old behind. She said that she was still breastfeeding, and she couldn’t leave the child behind. And in an effort — and we know this because we reviewed bodycam footage and bystander footage — we know that officers really wanted them, specifically this young man, Carlos, to let go, and he wouldn’t let go of his daughter or his wife.
And so, you can see in the video the moment when an agent decides to reach around from the back and press his fingers and thumb into his neck. And he appears to start having a seizure. And he shakes so violently that his young daughter, who is, of course, crying, is shaking with him.
He did end up getting to be released with his daughter, but he’s filed a lawsuit alleging not only excessive force, but also alleging that ICE officers delayed medical attention when he requested it on the scene. And so, it was — it’s really a difficult video to watch, but these arrests are playing out around the country, and often in full view of cameras and witnesses.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And this issue of ICE arresting American citizens? You mentioned there have been about 130 of them, including about a dozen elected officials. Could you talk about some of those cases, especially the case of Dulce Consuelo Díaz Morales?
NICOLE FOY: Yes. So, last year in October — and this count was only updated as of October 2025 — we had found that more than 170 U.S. citizens in total were arrested around the country by immigration agents. Around 130 of those were actually arrested after accusations of assaulting officers or during protests or because they were alleged to be obstructing ICE activities. But there were also many other U.S. citizens, like Dulce, who were arrested and detained because of the fact that immigration agents believed that they were not U.S. citizens. And this is despite evidence that was often presented to them at the time of arrest or afterwards by family members. I believe that is the case of what happened with Dulce, that she — they presented a birth certificate, and yet she was still detained for a number of days over the holidays, if I’m remembering correctly.
AMY GOODMAN: Dulce Consuelo Díaz Morales’s case first gained national attention when one of her attorneys took to the internet out of frustration with the lack of legal process and progress in the case.
VICTORA SLATTON: My name is Victoria Slatton. I’m an immigration attorney. I currently have a client who is a U.S. citizen who is in ICE custody. … They are blatantly ignoring orders from the court. They are not allowing me access to my client. And I am at a loss, and I’m incredibly angry.
AMY GOODMAN: Dulce Consuelo Díaz Morales was finally released from ICE detention earlier this month. And this is how NBC4 Washington reported on her release and reunion with her 5-year-old son.
MAURICIO CASILLAS: This is the moment when Dulce Consuelo Díaz Morales is once again able to embrace her son. The 22-year-old mother says she was overjoyed, and it was an incredibly emotional moment when she saw her son once again. She says she was detained by ICE agents on December 14th in front of her family near her home in Baltimore. She says ICE agents told her to get out of the car because she was being detained. She says she tried to explain to them that she was born here in Maryland, but she says they didn’t believe her.
AMY GOODMAN: In your ProPublica exposé, what has surprised you most, Nicole?
NICOLE FOY: I think one of the most surprising things is maybe that both — like, this is just happening around the country, and often just really in full view of cameras, whether people — whether immigration agents are arresting U.S. citizens —
AMY GOODMAN: And they’re grabbing cameras.
NICOLE FOY: And grabbing cameras. I think that is really, like, as someone who is a journalist, and so, of course, as a huge advocate of the free press — it is perfectly legal to document these activities, and yet many of the U.S. citizens who have been arrested by immigration agents believe that they were arrested because they were filming, and after they were told to stop filming.
AMY GOODMAN: And agents are usually masked. How can they be held accountable? You are documenting illegal actions.
NICOLE FOY: I think it’s really difficult. We’re, of course, seeing a number of states and other municipalities try to find some way to allow their residents to file — to file lawsuits against officers. But that’s really difficult when not only have — are these agents masked, the government is not telling us, usually, who someone is that has committed an act of excessive force or something like that. But on top of that, the institutions within ICE and DHS that are supposed to hold these officers accountable and at least conduct some type of internal review have been just completely stripped of personnel and authority.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you very much for being with us. Nicole Foy is a reporter for ProPublica covering immigration and labor. We’ll link to all your recent pieces.
Coming up, President Trump threatens to invoke the Insurrection Act and send troops to Minneapolis. We’ll talk about the significance of this and also speak with Mahmoud Khalil about a ruling that came down in court yesterday. Could it lead to his rearrest and possible deportation? Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: “Protest Song” by Richard Myhill, here on Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
